Homecoming
by Token312
Summary: Calvin, now a young man, comes home for the holidays.


It snowed on the drive to his parents' home in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Calvin had to squint through a screen dime-sized snowflakes that scattered across the fogged and frosted windshield to see the road ahead. The headlights illuminated only a white, salt-paved pate of highway as his Audi chugged into the gloom. He was wary of the ruby taillights of other cars that proceeded down the road like lame mules through the shared gloom of a wintry December night.

Absently, Calvin reached a gloved hand to the dashboard to fiddle with the radio knob. A smattering of rock filled the car for a few seconds. Then Christmas carols. And more Christmas carols. It was that time of year. He settled on a news report. Roads were closing, the announcer stated. He looked to the side of the highway which blurred past, a whitening expanse of gathering snow that stretched on into the black and icy night.

It was a stretch of road that he knew well, and one that he had crossed many times on the way home. The first time driving to college at Ohio State. Cardboard boxes crammed into the back of the old station wagon, his father driving, constantly checking the tattered map in his hands. Sitting in the back seat, Calvin had noticed for the first time that his father was balding. His mother sat with her hands in her lap. After they had helped move Calvin's things into his dorm room and it was time to drive back, just the two of them, she moved stiffly and hurriedly, with tears in her eyes. Driving back to Cuyahoga Falls after college, his things packed once again into cardboard boxes, stopping frequently to Febreeze the car to get rid of the yeasty odor of beer that had been spilled into the carpeting. Driving to Cleveland for law school two years later. His father only this time, his hair now grey and thinning, his glasses glinting in the summer sun as he gripped the steering wheel and peered into an uncertain future. The family holidays that had come and went, like so many pictures and snippings that lay in the pages of an ethereal scrapbook whose contents fall loosely into an imperfect order, as they do in memory.

He pulled into the driveway at 11:30 that night and stood, a tall, lean man of thirty-three. He heard the familiar crunch of tires against gravel as the big car pulled into the narrow driveway. He got out of the car and shut the door. The sound was muffled by the falling snow. A few flakes fell wetly onto his crop of blond hair and he brushed them off, feeling the cold ice melt with the merest brush of his fingertips. He regarded the house before him, the bushes draped in snow beneath yellow-lit windows. He made his way up the walk unsteadily, his balance disturbed by the uneven ground and the briefcase that swung from his right hand. Up the brick walk, he steadied himself against the iron railing of the stoop as he arranged his scarf and tie, brushed his fingers through his hair one more time. He rang the doorbell. He was greeted by his mother. As she drew him to her he smelled her familiar perfume. Her frame felt slightly thinner through the light wool of her sweater, but she held him with the same warmth that she always had.

"How was the drive?" She said.

"Good. Snowing out there. But not too bad, yet. Is dad still up?"

"I'm still up," his father called. He was descending the staircase sleepily, putting on his glasses. He blinked as he switched the hall light on. He held Calvin in a stiff grip for a few seconds, then patted him heartily on the back as he withdrew. "Glad you made it here in one piece," he said. "Your mom left some leftovers out for you. I'll put some tea on and we can talk for a bit before I get back into bed."

A hurry of grunts as they moved Calvin's suitcase up the stairs. His father insisting that it wasn't heavy, but Calvin could see the man straining with the case.

Later, as the three of them sat at the kitchen table, Calvin forked mashed potatoes into his mouth and pushed around the peas. His mother smiled.

"Always a picky eater," she said. "I remember at one point it was a fight to get you to eat anything besides hamburgers and fries."

Calvin laughed. "This is good," he said. "I'm not being picky. I had a Subway sandwich before I left Cleveland." Silence beat through the house. He saw the snow falling heavily through the kitchen window, large and fleeting flakes falling and gathering on the sill. His father adjusted his glasses, sipped his tea. "How's work at the Firm?" his father said.

"Going well," Calvin said. "Busy. I had to leave late because I was writing a motion for Smith to review before filing."

Calvin's father nodded. He had retired from his patent law practice the year before, but knew Smith, Calvin's managing attorney, for years and still golfed with him occasionally.

The conversation drifted through the little kitchen easily. What relatives would be arriving tomorrow. The Cavs. Calvin's new job at the law firm. What it was like to be a young associate. Calvin asked what was going on in the neighborhood.

Calvin's mother bit her lip and glanced at her husband.

"What's wrong?" Calvin said.

Calvin's father spoke first. "Remember the girl who lived down the street, who was your age? Susie?"

Calvin laughed. "Suzie Derkins," he said. "Of course."

A clink of silverware. Calvin's mother pale in the light. "Suzie died, Calvin. Three months ago. Drunk driver. She was living out in Columbus doing her surgical residency."

Calvin's head swam.

"Suzie's dead?"

"Yes," his father said. "Yes."

His mother touched his hand. "I'm sorry. We went down for the service." She shook her head. "What a waste. There's a girl who could have been anything in life. She was so smart. Smartest kid in her class."

Calvin said thickly, "Yeah. I used to...I used to try and cheat off of her in first grade." He looked up. "How did I not know about this?"

His father said, "Well, I don't know...we thought it was a terrible thing, a sad thing, but we didn't think you ever...you know, we didn't think you were very close anymore. Didn't want to bother you about it with your new job and everything."

"We weren't," Calvin said. "We weren't close. Last time I saw her was at our high school reunion four years ago.

Calvin remembered the large room at the restaurant in downtown Cleveland, the garish lighting and cash bar, Moe showing up drunk in a suit that was too small for him, spilling his drink and muttering excuses as he stumbled about the room. The faces that turned toward him in shock, the girls cocking their head in slack-jawed wonder at the young man in the Brooks Brothers suit with the firm handshake. Unrecognizable from the unshaven punk with the perennial unwashed Sex Pistols t-shirts that he had worn and lived in throughout Junior High and High School. The class pothead turned young lawyer. Suzie showing up in a tailored black dress with her fiancee, a young medical student she had met at Stanford Med. When she shook his hand and hugged him, he felt soft skin. She had whispered into his hear, out of her fiancee's earshot, that he looked good. That he looked different. Leaving the party later. She had said, I'll Facebook you. Been a long time. Sorry we lost touch when my parents moved. He had smiled. He had thought about asking for her number, but walked to his car instead, alone.

It was getting late and his parents pleaded exhaustion. Big day tomorrow, getting the house ready for relatives. Calvin walked up the familiar stairs, into the little room that he knew so well.

He awoke at 4 am that morning. Moonlight shone through the frosty panes and cast a milky patina over the walls of the room. Suzie Derkins dead, cold as the ground that held her beneath a headstone marked with the years that bookended her birth and death. He stood and paced around the room, looking out at the white blanket that covered the yard, lit by the moon that pierced the blackness of the night sky like a frozen astrolabe crafted of impersonal, celestial steel. He turned to look at the room, the closet that had once scared him so. He walked across the carpet and opened the closet now. After a minute of rummaging, he found it. His hands stroked the familiar fur, running his palms over the musty fabric and hard black beads that served as eyes.

He fell asleep clutching it, its warmth against his chest. A grown man holding a stuffed tiger in the pit of the frozen night, tears silently staining the pillowcase like the solitary tokens of loss that fall like beggar's coins from blighted souls.


End file.
